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One night a week I teach at a college in a textile city not far from here. Each Monday there is a taxi waiting for me at the college gate - same driver each week. He speaks no English and my Chinese is very limited.

Each night he takes me on the same route - the cab fare seldom varies. It is an experience! The driver is quite experienced, and is always alert for the roads are full of danger. Bicycles, electronic bikes, carts, and all sorts of weird transport is on the road at that time of night and all of the above mix it on the roads with private cars, taxies and buses. The cars, taxies, and buses will have lights on - perhaps, but certainly not the smaller vehicles.

As well there seems to be a roulette game for pedestrians - who often are just shadowy figures on the dimly lit roads.

Cars and buses don't stay on "their side of the road" and often
the taxi weaves its way in and out of traffic, especially at traffic lights which don't seem to have the same response that would be expected of drivers and pedestrians in my own country.

It reminds me of the dodgem cars at the fairs, where the little cars, well protected, race around a track - try to dodge or miss the other vehicles but usually colliding on a regular basis.

Now I have not been in a collision on my jaunts in the taxi - but many of my journeys are heart stoppers, especially when it is raining.

After the class, one of the senior staff from the school drives me home. He does not speak English and always puts a CD on in the car, on loud, so that even if I did speak he would not hear. He seems quite afraid that I will speak and he will be unable to respond.

He is a man in his middle years and I suspect has not been driving all that long. His driving is quiet intriguing. He drives very slowly at times, and there seems no reason for it. He drives with the car headlights on full beam (which is probably not a bad idea with all the shadowy pedestrians and other vehicles on the road), and he weaves in and out of traffic in a way that at home we'd be stopped by the police. But everyone does it.

It is quite odd - as I don't fear these jaunts, but I do experience a sigh of relief when I arrive safely back at the school gate.

I have no idea what the traffic rules are here - it is hard to determine them from watching, as at times it appears "anything goes" - and I've seen a couple of "prangs" where usually it is a bus or a car that has clipped one of the smaller vehicles or bicycles.

Overladen trucks and carts, cars that ignore traffic lights, pedestrians who walk across the road without looking in any direction.

Fascinating. Scary. This is China.

Adventures of an Australian English Teacher

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